Why have religions emerged only from a few places in the world? || Acharya Prashant, at DTU (2023)

Acharya Prashant

‍♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant? Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...   Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books? Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...  ~~~~~  Video Information: 23.12.22, DTU, Delhi  Context: ~ Why has India been a birthing ground for religions and saints? ~ What is special in India?  ~ How does religion flourish?  ~ Is India inherently religious?  ~ How does Indian philosophy emerge? ~ What is religion? ~ Were our hunter-gatherer ancestors religious? ~ What differentiates man from animal?  ~ What is your destiny?  Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~

Transcript

00:00Namaste sir, so I have observed one thing that if we look at the major religions and

00:14spiritual traditions around the world, we see and which are well accepted, we see that

00:19they emerged from certain places only, for example the Abrahamic religions, all of them

00:26happened in the Arab world and around Israel and Saudi, then Zoroastrianism happened in

00:32Iran and then India has been the most fertile land for the growth of these traditions and

00:37religions, for example Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and even the foreign traditions

00:42when they came to India, for example Sufism when it came to India, it flourished in a

00:46very unique fashion and we have, the Indian subcontinent especially has had a long list

00:53of saints, so and we don't see these things in the European history or in the Americas

01:01or any other places, heard of a place called Greece, heard of Athens, heard of the Sophists,

01:16Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, they were not Europeans, it's just that at particular patches

01:25in time, there exist favourable ecosystems, there was a wonderful ecosystem in Greece

01:36before Christ and you have excluded China, you have excluded Japan, so what remains then?

01:48Then we have the Middle East, then we have Iran, then we have India and India the entire

01:53subcontinent, we have also included China, we have included Japan, we have included Europe,

01:58what remains?

01:59India is one, India, Pakistan, the subcontinent, ecosystem, nothing else, ecosystem, once something

02:15starts somewhere, it becomes the thing for that place, what do you know Detroit today

02:24for?

02:27What do you know California today for?

02:31What do you know Bangalore today for?

02:34So is there something particular in the geography of Bangalore that makes it conducive to silica

02:44or something?

02:45No, nothing, it's just that due to historical and coincidental reasons, an ecosystem develops

02:54there and once the ecosystem is there, more and more stuff starts happening, if you want

03:00to investigate more into it, India was a more fertile land for religious enquiry because

03:08the soil was fertile, because the monsoons were guaranteed and you could do nothing about

03:20the monsoons, remember in those days there was hardly any irrigation, so you simply had

03:28to wait for the rains, what do you do when you wait for the rains and the population

03:34was sparse, so there was good food, ample food for everyone and the Indus basin and

03:43the Ganga basin are one of the most fertile basins in the world, the alluvial soil here

03:49coming right from the Himalayas, so you had abundance of everything and there is not much

03:57you can anyway do because the monsoons will come when they have to, what do you do?

04:03You have ample leisure and in that leisure you sit, you observe, you talk to people,

04:10there is space for intellectual enquiry, for hours and hours can you visualize the thinkers,

04:19the sages, the seers just purposelessly talking to each other and from that purposeless discussion,

04:28from silent observation of life for hours, days, months, years come those insights that

04:35you today take as Indian philosophy, you cannot have philosophical development if you are

04:43running behind your ambitions and if you have a tied up day and you very well know that

04:488 am you have to do this and 6 am this and that kind of clockwork will never allow any

04:55kind of internal leisure and if that internal leisure is not there, no insight, no wisdom

05:02can develop, you all must remember this, give yourself space, freedom, opportunities to

05:09take stock, you understand what is meant by taking stock, just stop, stop for long durations,

05:17at least for a few hours and recollect what's going on, am I just running, what's going

05:25on and this period of taking stock can extend to months if possible for you.

05:33In fact in my own growth, the breaks that I used to get from school and later on from

05:41IIT were very important, most of my initial poetry was composed in breaks and the breaks

05:49were significant, the entire December used to be free and then May, June, July and that

05:57used to provide an ample space in which one could just be himself, so that's what it is,

06:07ecosystems are very important, that's the reason universities are very important.

06:13So as you said that because ecosystem was favourable in India but in the Arab world

06:20the survival conditions were very brutal, they were very tough, so how did Prophet Ibrahim

06:27or Prophet Mohammed or Christ managed to awaken their consciousness?

06:34Same thing can happen when the ecosystem is very unfavourable, you very well know that

06:40nothing will happen however hard you try, so what do you do, you stop trying.

06:47If you think of the process of the Quran, Prophet Mohammed used to go up a hill and

06:57sit there for long durations, that sitting alone for long durations is at the core of

07:07insightful realisation, if you are someone who cannot be by himself, if you are afraid

07:15of being alone, if you cannot remain silent to yourself, you will never realise anything.

07:30The fact is, please understand, even if you go to the Paleolithic times, what you find

07:40is religion emerging in a very preliminary way, so it's never specific to one geography,

07:51where there is man, there is dissatisfaction and where there is dissatisfaction, there

07:58is an enquiry into the reason of dissatisfaction and that enquiry itself is called religion.

08:06I am not whole, I am not well, why do I remain restless within, how do I take care of this,

08:13that itself is religion, so that is found even in the caveman, they did not know that

08:20they are restless because something within is amiss, so what would they do, they started

08:26out by looking into the physical universe, so they would say, oh probably that tree is

08:33great, if that tree blesses me, I would be alright, oh probably that river is great,

08:41probably the sky god or the sun god, they are the greatest, they are the absolute, so

08:47there is a search within the human being, always, always for the greatest, the best,

08:53the absolute and that's what differentiates man from animals, animals do not search for

09:00the best, the greatest, the final, the infinite, the absolute, man always searches for that

09:06and if life is not used in searching the absolute and meeting it, then life is wasted, so there

09:15was a point in the history of evolution of human beings, when we started to think, that

09:24point comes 70-80 thousand years before today and the moment that point comes, also you

09:36start seeing the emergence of some kind of worship, our brains, the moment they gain

09:46some maturity, one of the things that come immediately to the brain, the mind is that

09:54it starts to worship, now what does worship mean, think of it, worship means there has

10:00to be something bigger and I prostrate in front of it, so this search for bigness, bigness,

10:09that bigness is your destiny, that's what Vedanta calls as Atma and it's not a doctrine,

10:17it's not a dogma, it's contained within you, even if you deny Vedanta, that restlessness

10:23will remain, so Vedanta is not a concept or a principle, it is just expressing what

10:31is already within you, irrespective of whether you believe in Vedanta or not, that's why

10:37I said that there is no need to believe, it is, what is need not be believed in, it can

10:45be known, there is no need to believe.

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